By AJ Irving, December 2024
Fleet Mobility Today
The global market for aftermarket car telematics is growing fast, a promising offer especially in countries and cities with high vehicle theft rates seeking stolen vehicle tracking solutions.
In the Americas, among the cities with high vehicle theft rates are Sao Paulo, Porto Alegre (Brazil), Mexico City and Jalisco (Mexico), as well as San Francisco and Los Angeles (United States).
In 2023, 26.7 million aftermarket car telematics units were shipped, according to a global research report by IoT analyst firm Berg Insight. By 2028, that number is expected to rise to 38.7 million, a 44.9% increase over five years.
The number of active units in use is also on the rise. It's projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9%, from 87.7 million units at the end of 2023 to 135.1 million by 2028, the report said.
Aftermarket car telematics can be installed in different ways. These include hardwired blackboxes, self-installed OBD dongles, and battery-powered devices. Cellular technologies are the most common, but RF-based solutions are also widely used, especially for services like stolen vehicle tracking (SVT) and stolen vehicle recovery (SVR).
These telematics solutions serve many purposes, like tracking stolen vehicles, vehicle diagnostics, providing Wi-Fi hotspots, convenience features, and enabling usage-based insurance. They typically combine cellular/GNSS and RF-based technologies, according to the report.
One of the advantages of aftermarket services is that they can specialize to meet the needs of specific customer groups. This is different from OEM telematics, which are designed for a wide range of use cases. For example, dealers are a key customer group for aftermarket services because telematics offerings can be tailored to fit their business.
Factors like high vehicle crime rates drive the demand for SVT solutions, especially in countries like Brazil, Israel, Russia and South Africa, the report said.
“The number of active aftermarket SVT units in use is forecasted to reach 91.2mn in 2028 from 58.2mn at year-end 2023 [56.7% jump in five years]”, says Berg Insight Senior Analyst Martin Cederqvist, confirming that he sees a promising future in aftermarket solutions even in mature OEM telematics markets.
